Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Helpful blog post at Kim Garst Boom Social with 10 valuable Facebook marketing tips.

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If you think Facebook is simply about customer service, rather than a driver of sales, have a look at these numbers! 

Facebook has just finished a deal to acquire mobile photo sharing app Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock. Instagram will remain an independently branded standalone app that’s separate from Facebook, but the services will increase their ties to each other. The transaction should go through this quarter pending some standard closing procedures.

Last year, documents for a standalone Facebook mobile photo sharing app were attained by TechCrunch. Now it seems Facebook would rather buy Instagram which comes with a built-in community of photographers and photo lovers, while simultaneously squashing a threat to its dominance in photo sharing.

At 27 million registered users on iOS alone, Instagram was increasingly positioning itself as a social network in its own right — not just a photo-sharing app. And it was clear that some users were doing more of the daily sharing actvities on Instagram rather than Facebook’s all-in-one mobile apps, which had to be cluttered with nearly every feature of the desktop site.

Facebook has become a vital social media tool for companies to interact with customers, raise brand awareness, and market their goods/services, however more companies are decreasing their social media investments in Facebook instead towards microsites and other alternative social channels. Companies are becoming more aware that "Likes" don't always guarantee that their messages effectively reach consumers. Companies blame the declining reach due to Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm, which organizes the way content is organized in a users news feed. The companies who are marketing their brand complain that they lack a level of control over their pages and the advertisements being sent out are leading to a lower return on their marketing investment in Facebook. This has led to a flight towards microsites or other smaller social media sites. Whether they are piggy backing on a site such as LinkedIn or created their own small site, these sites offer marketers more control over their content and have more options in page creation.  While most of these companies have no plans to fully abandon Facebook, they are still using the site to lure them to these microsites of theirs. According to the Jun Group, clicks that led people to brand-owned-and-operated sites doubled between 2012 and 2013 from 28 percent to 57 percent—while the segment of clicks that ended at Facebook dwindled from 31 percent to 10 percent.

I believe the change is good for marketers who are always striving to enhance their reach and investments. As Facebook becomes more aware of this exodus, then it will most likely adapt to these changes and allow for greater page customization and alter its content algorithm or else risk losing an important segment of its ad revenue. Even if marketers decide to return to Facebook, they now have a new channel to reach potential customers. The problem then moves onto users of social media sites who will be even more bombarded by advertisements no matter which site they go to.